Fischer, Fritz

German historian and professor (1948-73; emeritus, 1973-99) of medieval and modern history at the University of Hamburg who rejected the prevailing consensus of shared blame and postulated, most notably in his scholarly book Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18 (1961; Germany's Aims in the First World War, 1967), that the government of imperial Germany had consciously pursued a path to world power and had deliberately provoked the crisis that led to World War I (b. March 5, 1908, Ludwigstadt, Ger.-d. Dec. 1, 1999, Hamburg, Ger.).